SONDHEIM'S GRISLY OPERA RETURNS TO SAN FRANCISCO!
International operatic superstars Gerald Finley and Stephanie Blythe lead this season's production of Stephen Sondheim's horror opera set in Dickensian London for a truly ghoulish treat. When a corrupt judge exiles innocent barber Todd overseas, what he doesn't bank on is his victim turning into a murderous rogue who is set on murdering his way back to him, disposing of the bodies with the help of his besotted yet equally maddened neighbour Mrs Lovett, who has a truly unique take on filling her meat pies....
When a young sailor returns to London, he is thrilled to be back home. Not so his ravaged companion; a man that he rescued from the sea. This mysterious man tells Anthony a harrowing story. Seventeen years previous a young and innocent barber was wrongly convicted of a crime and sentenced to transportation; all so that the judge and another barber could take advantage of the man's wife. The young man was called Baenjamin Barker; he now goes by the name Sweeney Todd, and he is determined to rescue his daughter, who is the ward of the judge following her mother's suicide - and is now in danger from the same judge.
Sweeney is immediately befriended by pie shop owner Mrs. Lovett who is struggling to keep afloat. Sweeney makers her a deal; in return for her help in setting up a barber shop upstairs, he will provide her with fillings for her meat pies, from the bodies of the men who wronged him. But as the number of bodies stack up, Todd's murderous rampage threatens to blow the whole grisly operation; will he be able to save his daughter? Or will he become the monster that he was accused of being all those years ago?
